Teaching, learning and evaluating skills and competences in MLF Primary

3.TEACHING, LEARNING AND EVALUATING SKILLS AND COMPETENCES IN MLF PRIMARY

For learning a MLF, there are four skills that the children have to acquire on the teaching-learning process. The acquisition of these skills is secuenced, first listening, speaking, reading, and then writing.

3.1. Listening 

ccording to Scott and Ytreberg (1991), we can't work the skills as four isolation things at school. These are connected and there are activities to practise the listening and development the others skills. Listening is the skill that children acquire first, but we have to give them visual back-up and not to overload children, because they have a very short attention span. Besides, when the pupils don't understand something, they can't listen again without our help. We have to pay attention and to break for do questions if we are telling a story, for example. There are many types of activities that we can use, like:

• “Listen and do”: the teacher use the movement for start the English lesson, giving instructions like “hop on your left foot five times”, so you know if the children have understood, and they learn vocabulary, counting, spelling,... Besides, the pupils learn from each other. Some examples are put up your hand when, mime stories or drawing.
• “Listening for information”: the pupils have to listening for specific information these activities are often used to check what the children know, but they can also be used to give new information.Some of these activities areidentifying exercises, listen for the mistake, putting things in order, questionnaires, listen and colour.
• “Listen and repeat”: these are enjoyable activities for children because they can get a feel for the language: the sound, the stress, the rhythm and the intonation. Activities like rhymes or songs.
• “Listening to stories”: the stories have a important role to play in the child’s development and, of course, in the development of language. In the classroom, this create a friendly and secure atmosphere for the pupils. The teacher should not moralise or explain the story, although, discussion is very important. Children can telling, creating or reading stories.
• “Independent listening”: this is about to have an English corner where the pupils can sit comfortable and have books to read, and others materials, like cassettes, for practise and investigate about foreign language.
• “Questions and activities”: they are activities about a listening, like questions or more creative, for example asking for a end for a story.
  
  All these activities connect the listening with the movement, and that motive the pupils who can learn to the others when they don't understand the instructions, seeing their classmates. A great example of this kind of activities is mime stories (listen and do), where the teacher tells a story and the teacher and the pupils do the actions. It provides physical movement and give the teacher a chance to play along with the pupils.

Listening with Pipo:

3.2. Speaking

Limitations

Need for improvement in the use of oral English in class. Need to achieve a spontaneous fluency in using oral language class. Need to increase participation and motivation in English class.

Finding the balance

What is important with beginners is finding the balance between providing language through controlled and guided activities and at the same time letting they enjoy natural talk.

Correction

Is important while pupils is working with controlled and guided activities, we want them to produce correct language. If they make mistakes at this stage they should be corrected at once.

Examples:

Trough the pupils:

Teacher says; “Listen to me, please. Maria can swim. Peter can sing. Miriam can ride a bike. Paula can whistle”.

The sentences should be true and accompanied by the appropriate actions and sounds.

Using a mascot:

We can use a class mascot, “Teddy” (for example).

If teacher use a teddy as his mascot, he/she can use Teddy to ask questions, pupils can ask through Teddy: “Teddy wants to know…..” teacher can present dialogues with Teddy as your partners.

Drawings:

Use very simple line drawings on the board.

Silhouettes:

Using silhouettes on the overhead projector, they can be given movement if teacher attach a piece of wire to them.

Controlled practice

Controlled practice goes hand in hand with presentations since it is very important that pupils try out new language as soon as they have heard it. In controlled practice there is very little chance that the pupils can make a mistake.

Guided practice

Guided practice follows on directly from controlled practice and will often be done either in pairs or in small groups. Guided practice usually gives the pupils some sort of choice, but the choice of language is limited.

Dialogues and role play work

Working with dialogues is a useful way to bridge the gap between guided practice and freer activities. Controlled dialogues can easily develop into freer work when the pupils are ready for it. Putting pupils into pairs for doing the dialogues is a simple way of organising even large classes.

Using objects: using objects can make a dialogue come alive for young children and give it an amusing communicative purpose.

Role play. Dialogues and role play are useful oral activities because:

Pupils speak in the first and second person. Texts are often in third person.

Pupils learn to ask as well as answer. They learn to use short complete bits of languages and to respond appropriately. They don’t just use words, but also all the other parts of speaking a language - tone of voice, stress, intonation, facial expressions, etc-

3.3. Reading

According to House (1997) for students to be competent readers a rule to follow the teacher: “Let the children read they are ready to do so”. Reading entail two skills: decoding and reading with understanding.
In addition, to encourage reading in the classroom is necessary also outside it. For this, there are many materials or books upon it, theymust awaken interest.
There are several types of activities to work: jumbling words, encouraging reading and guessing the meaning of unknown words. Jumblig words consist to decomposition of a word in his letters to form another word.

3.4. Writing

As House (1997) says writing consists of motor skills as well as language skills. We take into account the development of pupils and adapt the resources and materials. For this reason, the written exercises have a set pattern, it always have the same structures.Also, it's important to know that children's free writing is slowly and costly, we must give the necessary time.There are five different kinds of written exercises:

3.5. Evaluation

Making an assessment plan

Basic testing areas:

Account individual abilities: One of the advantages of using a mixed assessment strategy is that you can encourage the students who have difficulties in English by rewarding good general work done in the classroom.

Assessment should be often and in small quantities. Don't forget the age of your students: they learn quickly but they also forget quickly!

CONTINUOUS ASSESSMENT.

You can then interpret these marks in the way described aboye, e.g.

Excellent progress: Average marks = 8-10/10

Satisfactory progress: Average marks = 5-8/10

Unsatisfactory progress: Average marks = 0-5/10

ORAL TEST

"How can I organise oral tests?"

  1.  Always tell the children that you are going to test them.

  2. Test them in small groups of about six.

  3.  Each time you test, change the members of the groups around so that the children have to learn to work with different members of the class.

  4.  Use different activities for testing

  5.  Acting out small plays based on a story or a roleplay

WRITTEN TEST

Give children a choice of exercises.

      Do not make the children work too quickly.

      Include a Listen and draw or Listen and write exercise.

GENERAL ATTITUDE AND EFFORT

Effort is very individual. Take into account that students will each be a.pplying different levels of effort to their work depending on:

- their interest in the subject

- their ability as students

Effort is very much a question of need. Students will apply the amount of effort needed to perform the task before them to the standard that they think you require.